Choripán sighted in hands on the right.
Choripán
I started a new sacrament when I fell in love with Venezuelan hot dogs: whenever I travel I must sample my host country's hot dogs. I've found that Latin American countries have mastered the hot dog, or they've at least taken hot doggery to dimensions unimagined north of the Rio Grande. For whatever reasons, street vendors throughout Latin America are much more willing to defy all convention to complement their product.
I've tried it all: shredded carrot, cabbage, parmesan cheese, peas, raisins, corn, blue cheese dressing, garlic sauce, potato sticks (essential), unholy amounts of mayonnaise, avocado, etc. I suppose indigenous diets could influence local hot dog flavors, but I sometimes wonder if the vendor is grabbing whatever he can to appeal to more customers. Either way, it pays off in the end, and no matter how ludicrous the toppings, when I partake of the hot dog, I commune with the country and its people. There are always finer local cuisines, Brazilian feijoada, Venezuelan pabellón, Argentine parrillada, but the reality is that the hot dog is the true plebeian delicacy, the people's food.
I had a hot dog in Buenos Aires. But just as Argentines still drink their soda from a siphon, the working man eats the hot dog's old-timey predecessor: choripán.
Chorizo and pan. Sausage in a piece of bread. A real sausage, an intestine filled with minced meat, spices, and herbs. Real bread made by a baker that same day.
The night we got back from Patagonia, the night we met Hugo, I slipped away from my friends for my ceremony. I had spotted a place to get a choripán about a block and a half from our apartment.
Three men talked inside the corner shop. They worked there, and made me feel bad about bringing my business. I asked for a choripán and sat at a table lit in florescent light outside under a lean-to. Two small tables, each with two chairs, sat pushed up to the dirty sea-green stucco wall. I backed my chair against the wall and sat facing the street.
A young man around my age worked the grill, a grate hanging by chains over a large table of embers. He pulled glowing pieces of charcoal from a burning heap at the edge of the table and placed them under the grate. Coals in place, he turned a handle to lower the chains and meat closer to the heat. The grate held two chickens spread wide, a shoulder of beef, a leg of sorts, and 18 chorizos stacked three on a row of seven on a row of eight. And there was mine as well, a bright red sausage taken from the stack to cook by itself by the shoulder.
His mind was nowhere under dark curls or behind vacant dark eyes. He moved listlessly, adding embers, moving cuts of meat, turning the sausage, walking back inside, coming back out, until he left without a word and walked across the wet night street and disappeared into the neighborhood. One of the other men came out and finished it. Took it from the grill and split it down the middle, pulled a red and purple plaid cloth off of a plastic bin full of rolls, cut open a roll and asked me what I wanted on it. Mayonesa. I asked for a grapefruit soda and ate in silence, slowly tearing my teeth through the roll and the sausage. Chorizo's not made to be eaten easily like a hot dog, it's made to be awesome. I washed it down with the soda and stood up to pay.
I don't think it cost more than 40¢ (American), but I'm not sure. It hardly cost anything and I didn't have enough small change. Somehow the transaction ended with me owing 5¢ (Argentinean). I said I'd come back with it, but I didn't. I left the country 11 hours later.
—October 15 2004